Scripts!

So one of my jobby jobs at the Tutoring Industries Inc. is to get a handle on and hopefully better organize their SAT program. So I've been doing some extra work reading through the corporate manuals on how to train teachers, recruit clients, talk to parents and the like.

Everything - everything - is scripted.

Down to the letter. In an initial parent conference, for example, there is a highly specified order of talking points, what you are to say when, what their possible objections will be, what you should say in response, and on and on and on. Including verbatim snippets of how you should praise little Timmy.

It's salesmanship = science. And I can't help but read the thing as a boldly dishonest affair, some kind of attempt to turn the experience into a predetermined capsule of outcome (which is obviously, from the salesman's POV, the whole idea; you want that sale to be guaranteed). But regardless of how pure your intentions of improving a student's scores and their chances for college and the cushy capitalist life afterwards, the whole thing is inauthentic, your office is a stage, and you're a player. The parents/kid, of course, are kept as duped as possible so they don't realize your procrustean treatment of their "special, individual" situation. Natch, this is how a franchise operates; everything controlled to maintain a consistent corporate image. But how does anyone spit this stuff out without feeling like a robotic automaton?

It reminds me of med school - I can't even count the times that the sentiment of "be nice to your patients, because if you are nice they won't sue you." The scientific method applied to human interaction finds that decency is not decency but rather efficacy. The non-suits are not a side benefit; they were routinely called as a primary aim! Why be nice to your fellow humans? For your financial security, por supuesto! Doesn't this assume that we are deep down self-interested a-holes who require practical reasons for amiable behavior to transplant any kind of inborn "treat patients nice because they're people!" sentiments? Hmmmm, sitting in a classroomful of future physicians in that particular environment and contemplating their apparent characters, maybe the teachers had it right - teach to the bottom line.

So I'm in a bit of an authenticity whirlpool over this, and trying to give the company the full benefit of the doubt. And I start thinking about scripts, remembering their general application in anthropological type environments. I use pre-planned statements all the time; what is my specific objection here? When I go into a restaurant, I'd better invoke the "get me some pancakes" script, or I'm exiting stackless. A picture to break philo-rant monotony:

(That was, btw, a thinly veiled attempt at interrupting the "Nyet rant script" with something hilariously impromptu. Unless, of course, this script contains the particular stage direction, "something impromptu now.")

So back on topic: a huge range of our daily discourse is at best seemingly original, at worst hopelessly derivative. Even if intentionally try to create a sentence that's never been said before - "The pink giraffe has an awfully tough time determining the proper focus length for the lens of his monocle" - even this is constrained by untold numbers of rules and reasons for word and idea placement. For example, almost all of my original sentences contain the word "pink." And an animal.

So I think, perhaps, that the distaste I have for this behavior is not in the scriptedness in and of itself, as that is something that to a degree permeates all of our existence (not to mention our favorite sit coms). I think the problem is the dishonesty of it - this idea that I'm conversing with you human to human, but really I've got this whole model device that I'm going to try to manipulate the frame of conversation with. Now, anyone entering a sales interaction has to expect this to a degree - in social contract type speech, they know they're entering a sales exchange - but I would put forth that your most distasteful sales experience result from that samesaid dishonesty and the extent to which the salesperson is painting you into a role in a script. I'm thinking unctuous car salesman types here.

All of this gets back to one of my primo favorite themes, that of authenticity. And its possible impossibility - the dire question that seems to recur in my case is "authentic to what?" An arbitrary upbringing, a culturally defined set of values and thoughts? A destiny? I don't know; that whole game has vanished across the horizon in the light of the multitude of world outlooks, a lot of which are equally viable compared to any one you happen to be enacting at this particular moment.

Be yourself. Think for Yourself. Whatever; independence is a mythical ideal. But there are spectra, and this whole cooking recipe for taking people's cash, regardless of how good the intentions are, rings ont eh bad side for me. Business in general, I suppose, seems to be a victimful crime. I can't wrap my head around this well. This is why I fail. But when I look at a script with explicit instructions down to the word and tone of voice for what I say, I think: